Upenyu Makoni-Muchema has some fun with Blessing-Miles Tendi, Zimbabwean author and researcher.

Read the full interview with Blessing-Miles Tendi here (includes some audio).

Describe yourself in five words?
I’m a Zimbabwean researcher in African Politics.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Always give your best, and believe in yourself.

What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done?
It’s probably the women I’ve dated. Professionally I’d say it’s that I’ve been to places asking questions, where I shouldn’t be asking questions.

What is your most treasured possession?
My family, although it doesn’t sound right to call my family a possession.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Self pity.

Do you have any strange hobbies?
Often when I’m working on something I become rather obsessive about it.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
I’m kind of balding. I used to have very rich dark hair and I’ve got two sisters, who envied my hair. And now to see it go away while I’m still relatively young is just hard.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Giving, in terms of emotional or material support. But it does give you a lot back.

What have you got in your fridge?
I love those South African sausages … fish, pineapples, because pineapple is my favourite fruit.

What is your greatest fear?
Failure.

What have you got in your pockets right now?
This is the most bizarre thing about me. They’re empty; I never have anything in my pockets. I feel free that way. I like my pockets empty. You know what they say about a man who comes with empty pockets? He has no ulterior motives, what you see is what you get.

What is your favourite journey?
For me it’s always home. My parents are Ndau, but I was born and raised in Bulawayo.

Interviewer: Do you speak Ndebele? Ngiyakhulumisi Ndebele, ndino rekete chiNdau, ndino taura chiShona

Interviewer: What do you think about the great Shona Ndebele divide? There’s a book by Brian Raftopoulos and A Mlambo, Becoming Zimbabwe, it’s one of my favourite books right now. One of it’s aims it to take apart historical myths. One such thing they take apart is this divide between Shona and Ndebele. What is Shona really? What is Ndebele really? Ndebele is made out of various disparate groups, so are the Shona, Zezurus, Manyikas, Ndau . . . and they call them Shona. For me really these are politicised constructions, both Ndebele and Shona, which in many ways have kept the country apart, for quite false reasons. But obviously very useful to politicians.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Jocelyn Alexander. She was one of my supervisors at University. She’s an Oxford professor and the most intelligent human being I’ve ever met. I totally admire and look up to her.

When and where were you happiest?
Whenever I’m with my mother.

Interviewer: Are you a mommy’s boy? I guess you could say that. When I’m with my mum I’m at my happiest. Your mum’s your mum; she carried you around for nine months, its unconditional. I’ve made stupid mistakes in my time but she takes me back all the time.

What’s your biggest vice?
. . . Yeah, we’re having this interview and I’m having shots of brandy . . . that’s my biggest vice.

What were you like at school?
Quiet. A geek. Read a lot. Wanted to be popular, but never was because the popular in high school were the athletes.

What are you doing next?
Working on my next book. It’s going to be a history book. The core thesis is still a little disparate right now so I can’t get into what exactly I want to do. I guess I’m going to figure it out as I work on it.

I’ve just been reading about Facebook and Twitter being blocked in Uganda. Museveni is worried about new media helping people to organise protests in response to state repression and economic hardship. I’m pretty sure that Mugabe wouldn’t feel a move like that was necessary in Zimbabwe. People don’t protest here, no matter how much we get kicked in the teeth. Reading Peter Godwin in the New York Times, I have to agree that the pressure from neighbouring states helps to turn up the heat on dictators. Neighbours can’t ignore wide scale protest. But they can ignore silence. Which is what Zimbabweans are very good at. We’ve had stolen elections, detentions, torture, mind blowing inflation and food shortages. We didn’t respond. Will we ever? What is certain is that SADC, the AU and Showerhead will continue to ignore the crisis in Zimbabwe because we let them.

I’m reminded of a quote from Viktor Frankl; What is to give light must endure burning.

Here’s Godwin’s latest:

Making Mugabe Laugh

Barely was Laurent Gbagbo, wearing a sweat-damp white tank top and a startled expression, prodded at rebel gunpoint from the bombed ruins of his presidential bunker in Ivory Coast, than Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced this conclusion: His ejection, more than four months after he refused to accept electoral defeat, sent “a strong signal to dictators and tyrants throughout the region and around the world. They may not disregard the voice of their own people in free and fair elections, and there will be consequences for those who cling to power.”

Zimbabwe’s 87-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, who began his 32nd year in power this week, must have chortled when he heard that one.

The parallels between Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe are striking: both were once viewed as the singular successes in their respective regions, the envy of their neighbors. Both Mr. Gbagbo, a former history professor, and Mr. Mugabe, a serial graduate student, are highly educated men who helped liberate their countries from authoritarian regimes.

Both later clothed themselves in the racist vestments of extreme nativism. Mr. Gbagbo claimed that his rival Alassane Ouattara couldn’t stand for president because his mother wasn’t Ivorian; Mr. Mugabe disenfranchised black Zimbabweans who had blood ties to neighboring states (even though his own father is widely believed to have been Malawian).

The two countries have also been similarly plagued by north-south conflicts. And when they spiraled into failed statehood, both leaders blamed the West, in particular their former colonial powers – France and Britain – for interfering to promote regime change.

Finally, the international community imposed sanctions against both countries, including bans on foreign travel and the freezing of bank accounts that have largely proved insufficient.

But here’s where the stories crucially diverge – why Laurent Gbagbo is no longer in power, while Robert Mugabe, who lost an election in 2008, continues to flout his people’s will.

The most important point of departure was the sharply contrasting behavior of regional powers. The dominant player in West Africa, Nigeria, immediately recognized the validity of Mr. Ouattara’s victory in United

Nations-supervised elections, and worked within the regional alliance, the Economic Community of West African States, to unseat the reluctant loser. But Zimbabwe’s most powerful neighbor, South Africa, played a very different role. Instead of helping to enforce democracy, it has provided cover for Mr. Mugabe to stay on.

Partly this is due to what is called “liberation solidarity.” Most of the political parties still in power in southern Africa were originally anti-colonial liberation movements – like those in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola – and they tend to abhor the aura-diminishing prospect of seeing any of their fellows jettisoned.

It is also because South Africa eyes the Zimbabwean opposition – which morphed out of a once-loyal trade union movement – through the suspicious lens of its own trade union movement’s contemplation of opposition politics.

As a result, instead of supporting the Zimbabwean opposition in 2008, Thabo Mbeki, then the South African president, bullied it into a power-sharing government of national unity headed by Mr. Mugabe. This democracy-defying model has threatened to metastasize into the mainstream of African politics; that same year it was also applied to Kenya, where a unity government was set up to end post-election bloodshed. When Mr. Mbeki was deputized by the African Union to broker a solution in Ivory Coast, that was the Band-Aid he reached for – but it was rightly rejected by Mr. Ouattara.

Of course, the other crucial difference is that in Ivory Coast, the dictator’s ejection came at the hands of men with guns. The northern rebels moved on Abidjan. The United Nations peacekeepers, trussed by restrictive mandates as always, nevertheless protected Mr. Ouattara until the French expanded an airport-securing operation into something altogether more ambitious. They basically prized Mr. Gbagbo from his bunker, though to avoid bad postcolonial optics, they brought the rebels in to make the final move.

In contrast, for refusing to plunge the country into a civil war, Zimbabwe’s democratic opposition has been rewarded by the international community by being largely ignored.

Next month, a group of southern African nations will discuss Mr. Mugabe’s continued resistance to agreed-upon reforms intended to pave the way to free elections. Either South Africa must get Mr. Mugabe to honor them, or it must withdraw its support for him. If it won’t, then the international community needs to push South Africa out of leading the negotiations, and engage more directly.

Zimbabweans need help if their voices are to be heard. If the United States wants to prove that Mrs. Clinton’s words were more than empty rhetoric, it should begin by pressuring South Africa. Otherwise Zimbabwe’s hopes for freedom will founder, even as Ivory Coast regains its stolen democracy.

Peter Godwin is the author of “The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe.”

Source

Here’s something from BOOK Southern Africa:

At the recent launch of Lloyd Sachikonye’s When a State Turns Against its Citizens at Lobby Books, the author spoke with passion about the changes he hopes to see in his home country, Zimbabwe.

Here is the full text of his address:

I am enormously grateful to be here today to share in the launch of this book, When a State Turns Against its Citizens. I am really happy to meet many friends, guests, compatriots who have come to grace this occasion. My profound thanks go to the organizers of this event, SALO and Lobby Books, and to the publishers who have made the publication process possible within two months from the initial submission of the manuscript…The turn-around of the process and the publicity have been superb and professional, thank you.

This is a publication about Political Violence in my country, Zimbabwe. A country of enormous contradictions: on the one hand, it has one of the highest rates of literacy on this Continent, and one of the largest proportions of educated and skilled professionals. A country that showed great promise three decades ago, that was described variously as ‘a jewel’ and ‘breadbasket’.

But as the narrative of this book chronicles, it is now a country deeply mired in political violence and moral crisis. The roots of Political Violence go back not only to 2000 as some analysts assume, but to the 1950s and 1960s, half a century ago. The roots are to be found in:

* The ruthless suppression of moderate African nationalism by the colonial state; they used beatings, dogs and guns for example.

* Violence by nationalists between their parties in the early 1960s, the original ZAPU and ZANU in 1963-64; they employed stones, sticks and petrol bombs, for instance.

* Violence against civilians by colonial regime forces but also by liberation forces during the 1970s, and Use of violence to settle differences within liberation armies themselves.

After Independence in 1980, the post-colonial state inherited the apparatus and techniques of violence against those who criticized it. As years went by, that arsenal was used against rival parties such as ZAPU till 1987, against ZUM in 1990 and the MDC since 2000.

This culture and practice of violence were celebrated by leaders of Zanu PF who openly boasted of having ‘degrees in violence’. As the country witnessed, these were not empty boasts.

The book observes that the consequences of the culture of violence reached a peak in 2008 when the citizens’ bid for political change was blocked like in Kenya, and now Cote d’Ivoire. The incumbent party and the state used their apparatuses to frustrate a free and fair run-off election.

Subsequent chapters of the book show that the consequences of Political Violence include widespread trauma, scars, fear, stress and apathy. The full magnitude of these psychological and physical conditions is not known. It is partly because Zimbabwe is a society under trauma that it has experienced an exodus of up to 3 million, or a quarter of its population.

This situation of Political Violence needs to change because the consequences are terrible. Other countries that experienced large-scale Political Violence have demonstrated great political will to stop it. Take this country, South Africa. In the 1994 election, about 1 000 people were killed in Political Violence, many were maimed. In the last several elections, like in 2009, no single person died in Political Violence.

Why should Zimbabwe be exceptional? Why should its elections be marred always be marred by Political Violence? Why should impunity be tolerated? These are some of the questions raised in this book.

The book concludes with a few recommendations. Zimbabwe has great human resources but also resilient moral resources, and potential for civic values and democratic change. Let them be harnessed against Political Violence and the authoritarianism which sponsors it. Let them be harnessed for a credible process of transitional justice, and reform of security sector institutions. Let our knowledge of the history of Political Violence and various negative effects propel us to do something about it.

Book details

* When a State Turns Against its Citizens: Institutionalized Violence and Political Culture by Lloyd Sachikonye
EAN: 9781431401116

What does it mean to be Zimbabwean? If propaganda and political rhetoric from Our Dear Leader and his cohorts are to be believed it means winning a medal at some sporting event while, say, swimming or playing cricket for Zimbabwe. For those of us who are under achievers, or lazy, it means being black. I cannot help but feel that Zimbabwe is further away from resolving its racial issues than it was at Independence. Being born-free, and a member of the generation that attended private school without there being a quota system that mandated my presence, being Zimbabwean meant simply a love for my country and the things that make it unique. That is not to say that we weren’t aware of the cultural difference between races – we were.  But back then, it was ok to discuss them, to explore our individual identities within the context of our group identity as Zimbabweans, now it’s considered racist.

I think Zimbabwe is far from being post racial. I think there are those of us who in our heads, there are friends who I hang out with, who are definitely post racial in their outlook, but I think we’ve still got a lot of issues to deal with. There’s no doubt about it…racial issues and class issues. I’m not sure, but I think the last ten years have in some ways dragged us backwards, and in others have dragged us forwards. Dragging us backwards, there does seem to be more racial tension here now than there was when I was growing up. It’s definitely because of all the hate propaganda, the political propaganda that gets spewed in the state media. In how it’s dragged us forward, I think it’s made those who believe in Zimbabwe have to fight for it, be they black white or coloured, and that’s hopefully brought people closer together. At the same time Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, black, white: all these middle class kids who’ve gone abroad, connecting with their Zimbabweans identity. They grew up here and wanted to go away as quickly as possible, and then they go over there and try to find their identity and realize what connections they’ve got back here. There are interesting things that come out. You’ve got white kids in London who’ve got an mbira punk band and things like this that you end up appreciating what you have when you’re far away [from home].
- Comrade Fatso.

Read the full interview with Comrade Fatso here.

The Youth Forum in a recent statement remind Zimbabwe’s authoritarian government that people power might well be coming to get them.

The capture and demise of Laurent Gbagbo, the Ivorian despot who refused to cede power after losing an election in November 2010 is testimony to the fact that dictators will not always have their way especially when the people have had their say as the people of Ivory Coast did in November 2010. While such news will obviously attract scorn and spite from like-minded dictators and sympathizers of despotic regimes, it is indeed sweet news for the people of Ivory Coast and other pro-democracy voices across the continent and the world.

As young people in Zimbabwe, we feel very inspired by the struggle of the people of Ivory Coast and take heart to the fact that even in the face of repression of the highest order, the forces of good always triumph against evil. We also feel encouraged that Gbagbo even after having sent his envoy to Harare to get a few notes on how to stay in power after losing an election, eventually could not have it his way. His capture while holed up in his fortified bunker reminds us of the same demise of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraq strongman.

As the Youth Forum, we take this opportunity to urge our politicians in Zimbabwe to be always mindful of the fact that real power lies with the people and it is the people who always have the final say. As the country gears for elections which shall signal the end of the current inclusive government, we urge all the political players in the country to genuinely work towards ensuring that the next elections are convened in an environment that allows the people to have the final say. We also urge SADC as the guarantors of the GPA to continue tightening the screws on our political players to ensure that the next election will not be fraudulent or is not again stolen by the loser. We again urge SADC to heed the winds of change that are sweeping across the African continent, long considered as the last den of dictators. The days of African ‘dictatorship’ disguised as African ‘brotherhood’ are long gone and the world as we know it has become less tolerant of dictators.

I spent most of my life in Mutare even though I was born in Bulawayo and I am now a permanent resident of Bulawayo. This places me at a distinct advantage: I am very familiar with both the Shona and Ndebele worlds. There are a lot of things that both sides do not know about each and wild assumptions that damage relations are made.

Considering the history of Matabeleland: The slaughter of about twenty thousand people, there is always suspicion between Ndebele and Shona and a number of times I have to pull two warring sides apart as I happen to see things in a clearer light than a person who is exclusively Shona or Ndebele. I have a friend who believes every Shona person in Matabeleland is an enemy, planted in Matabeleland as part of the Gukurahundi agenda (the total disempowerment of the Ndebele people by flooding the region with Shona people and making sure that Ndebeles do not get any opportunities).

I cannot say for sure that the Gukurahundi agenda does not exist, but I believe individuals should be judged on individual merit not broadly based on the sins of a few mad people who did not have the people’s mandate to do what they did.

When my friend suggested that I happen to get opportunities because I have one leg in the Shona world and the other in the Ndebele world I knew the Shona-Ndebele thing had gone too far; I happen to have worked abnormally hard and continue to do so to get to where I am.  The so-called Gukurahundi agenda is now being used by lazy people who do not exploit opportunities as a crutch.

Whilst it is important to address past and current injustices, we have to remember that were we come from matters less than where we are going.